Red Leaves..., Fall Song...

Red Maple Leaves in September

Look at these leaves.., already turned to their blood-red Autumn hue, look at the sky, cold, white as a starched linen sheet, like it could snow.  Early this year, but beautiful all the same.

Fall Song ~ by Mary Oliver

Another year gone, leaving everywhere

its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply

in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island

of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

Except underfoot, moldering

in the black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries ---roots and sealed seeds

and the wanderings of water.  

This I try to remember when time's measure

painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing

to stay ---how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever

in these momentary pastures.